Yulisa Pat Amadu Maddy: No Past, No Present, No Future

The latest addition to my website is Yulisa Pat Amadu Maddy‘s No Past, No Present, No Future. Maddy is known as Sierra Leone’s greatest playwright but he wrote one novel, this one, a grim tale of three young Sierra Leonean men who lose their way in Bauya, an obvious proxy for Sierra Leone, and then in the UK. Joe is from the urban poor and is abused by his drunken parents and is not sorry when they are killed when their still explodes; Ade is from the well-to-do middle class and falls out with his parents when a young woman dies trying to abort her baby which, she claims in a note, Ade is the father of; Santigie is the son of a chief and the only one to be educated but is, to his disappointment, not elected to be chief when his father dies. They all work on the railways (and steal from their employer and the customers) and then, with the money earned, head for the UK. Things do not end up much better there, with racism and bad behaviour continuing. It is a sad tale of three young men who lose their way in a changing world.